Part of the growing North Point Ministries, Woodstock City Church's campus in Woodstock, Ga., houses a new-build facility within an existing brick building that serves the city of Woodstock.
The substantial structure is reportedly built in four quadrants that include an auditorium, its main room; an attic for high school and middle school worship; Upstreet, which is for K-5th grade worship, and Waumba Land for young children.
Known for leading house of worship installations around the country, Clark was responsible for providing audio design and implementation for the high school space and main room, as well as a full AV lighting design and distributed audio for the entire building.
According to Clark Project Manager Brandon Byrd, “For the main room which seats around 2,500, we have a Martin Audio MLA Compact system with nine cabinets a side and nine DSX dual 18-inch subs ground-stacked in a horizontal broadside array under the stage. Because the church has very contemporary worship rock and roll-style services in the North Point tradition, they wanted a PA with a lot of headroom that could provide exceptional clarity and intelligibility for the spoken word, something Martin Audio does very well.”
Challenges & solutions
Clark’s senior commissioning engineer, Ed Crippen, specifies, “The main room measures 160 feet wide by 90 feet deep––actually 75 feet deep from the edge of the stage––so it’s a rectangle with the stage facing the wide side of the room.
“The main challenge is a balcony, but with nine Compacts we have plenty of vertical, so the system covers the top part of that balcony beautifully. There’s a facing on the leading edge of the balcony that we minimized by opening up the MLA somewhat and making that area a ‘non audience area.’"
Crippen adds, "To compensate for the super wide floor plan of the room, we have two H3H+ Blackline Series for outside side fills to make sure the front rows are covered and two CDD15’s in the back corners of the room.”
When asked about the MLA’s performance in the sanctuary, Crippen responds, “The first thing that comes to mind is MLA’s very uniform coverage in terms of frequency response and SPL from front to the back and being able to contour what sounds good inside the room. We could cover the first row with no problem and keep the sound off stage. It’s nice and quiet behind the PA mains and wherever you go on the floor or in the balcony, the sound is right there in your face.”
Company Principal George Clark adds, “The church is very happy with the system. [Its] FOH engineer, Brandon Thompson, who has many years of recording studio experience, compares mixing on MLA to mixing on a pair of studio monitors, what he calls ‘a nearfield experience.’ He really enjoyed transitioning into the MLA system because it’s non-fatiguing and a joy to work on.”
The smaller attic space for youth ministry events has a portable stage with a powerful system comprised of two flown MSX subs, each with hangs of eight MLA Mini cabinets and five DSX subs under the stage.
In regard to the setup, Crippen notes, “We wanted something that would get loud, have plenty of headroom in the low end and be matched sonically to what’s in the main room. It’s relatively clean with the ability to focus the polar pattern of the system on the floor. The music is rock and roll and then some—anything from a DJ, Hip-Hop and all kinds of other music. It varies hugely in terms of content.”
“This installation with MLA was fantastic,” Clark reports. “The direction of loudspeaker manufacturers is going to more controlled arrays -- and we think Martin Audio MLA is definitely at the leading edge of this process. They deliver a very linear, consistent product, so the people in the front of the room have the same experience as those in the back of the room."
He adds, “... that's important to us because our job as system engineers is to make it sound consistent around the room and, once that’s done, the artistic process kicks in and the person in the mix position can make fine tuning adjustments to get the sound they want. Our job is not to create the sound, but stay out of its way and let the audio engineer do their job.”
